Yeah.... really good cheese with preserved fruits is delicious. We had a cheese plate recently and it was paired with honey, fig paste and apricot paste, plus some cured meats. So much good on that plate.

I think the acid in the fruit and honey cuts the richness of the cheeses. Kind of the same concept of pizza.

It is interesting to me that there can be a full page discussion of supermarket espionage and judgment, and no one has mentioned food stamp mothers and their children, and how it is even more painful to watch people super-fatten themselves and their children with your own money. I hate[ the grocery store and always leave angry.

Hey Mr. Perfidy - I know you wrote this way back in Feb, but I had to answer...

I was one of those kids, and my mom was one of those food stamp mothers - please don't begrudge them all. My mom found herself in the situation where she could get assistance or watch her kids go hungry, so she swallowed her pride and did just that. Now, being the proud woman she is, she used the time to regroup and then get the hell off of assistance, but you can never tell from appearances just who is who when you see welfare shoppers at the grocery store. And yes, our cart would have looked pretty SAD, with the diff that my mom bought real food first (ground beef, chicken, bread, veggies - even if they were canned, but no junk).

Personally, I am glad I wasn't hungry, whatever else was going on in our lives back then, ya know?

I have a mantra that I have spouted for years... "If I eat right, I feel right. If I feel right, I exercise right. If I exercise right, I think right. If I think right, I eat right..." Phil-SC

Right on Crabcakes. Anytime people talk the Foodstamp crap now, I ignore them. A breadwinner dies or leaves, so let's starve the kids. Nice attitude. Oh, and I got Foodstamps when I was in college; and grants; and loans (that I repaid) - all on the taxpayers' dime. You know what? I'm the taxpayer now. Without the assistance, I might have stayed a minimum wage earner all my life.

As a note, I haven't been in a grocery store in over six weeks, except the corner store for things like ham or cheese. Between online shopping and farmers market, I'm trying to get my grocery store shopping down to six times per year. I think I can; I think I can...

"Right is right, even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it." - St. Augustine

As far as putting restrictions on what people getting "food stamps" can buy, the more restrictions you put, the higher the administrative costs of the program. Then who decides what is okay, and what is not to be purchased, and what criteria do they use? If it's up to CW, they'd be permitted to buy sugar-added fat-free dairy and frozen whole grain baked goods but not meat. What if they don't have cooking facilities, but some vegan has decided they get onions and a sack each of rice and beans?

And the highest quality food is the most expensive, so they couldn't afford to feed their families much if they purchesed mostly wild-caught fish, grass-fed beef, and organic produce. The purpose of the program is to provide them with calories to survive, not an ideal diet according to anyone's idea of what that might be.

Most online discussions about this you find dozens of incompatible ideas about "what those people should be permitted to buy with my tax dollars" based on different ideas of what is or isn't healthy, what it is most cost-effective to feed them, and punitive issues like requiring them to eat distasteful food as an incentive to get off the program.

The whole cooking thing is sort of bizarre. The people running the system know that some of the people who get foodstamps are homeless, yet they can't buy prepared food. What some of the businesses in OR did was to start selling their product raw so they could take foodstamps for the raw product, and then charge a nominal charge for heating/cooking it - like 50c to a dollar which had to be paid in cash. Some even just put a microwave out for anyone to use for free.

One in nine families on foodstamps. One in four or five kids getting their last meal of the day at school at lunch. In a country that subsidizes agrabusiness so heftily, I wonder about priorities.

And I agree that I or anyone shouldn't be the one to decide how people feed their families.

"Right is right, even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it." - St. Augustine

Yeah.... really good cheese with preserved fruits is delicious. We had a cheese plate recently and it was paired with honey, fig paste and apricot paste, plus some cured meats. So much good on that plate.

I think the acid in the fruit and honey cuts the richness of the cheeses. Kind of the same concept of pizza.

The really good cheesemongers here sell quince jelly to serve with the cheese.

The discussion about food stamp restrictions makes me sad, I usually get sad over here that benefits handouts are so mean and restricted but at least they are still cash for the moment. There is a small groundswell in favour of a universal citizens income but it is still an extremely minority view.

Having worked at a grocery store in the past, the amount of people who abuse WIC and food stamps is depressing. There would be women with iPhones and Coach purses handing me WIC checks in the cashier's line. There are some people who really need it, but many, I would say, wouldn't need it if they would just get their priorities straight. I would gladly have my tax dollars go towards educational programs on finance and budgeting, in the long run I think it would help people get off food stamps more quickly.

Stumbled into Primal due to food allergies, and subsequent elimination of non-primal foods.

I barely even go to grocery stores anymore.
In the past few months:
-my meat is from the butcher and the Asian store's frozen-fish aisle
-my veg and fruit is from the indoor market
-I don't use soaps and am not yet low on deodorant
-I only drink booze when I am invited to it
-I have an endless supply of tea and coffee

Last time I went into a store was to grab some toothpaste at LiDL. You guys are now my lifeline for gross/weird/scary shopping-cart stories, that I may continue to heartlessly judge my fellow man.

--
Perfection is entirely individual. Any philosophy or pursuit that encourages individuality has merit in that it frees people. Any that encourages shackles only has merit in that it shows you how wrong and desperate the human mind can get in its pursuit of truth.

--
I get blunter and more narcissistic by the day.
I'd apologize, but...